Trading fear

          My trading strategy is not one that will have me so exposed to any particular trade that if something bad happened I would be wiped out. Because of this, my fear isn’t that I will someday have to take a giant loss on a bad trade. Yes, I will be wrong and take my medicine, but that’s not a big concern to me.

The losing streak is the big bad ugly monster I don’t want to fall victim to. I’ve known a number of traders who allowed losing streaks to continue, and it’s scary. A losing streak leaves a trader not knowing which way is up. During a losing streak, you don’t know what to trade, when to trade, or which way to trade. You don’t know which indicators are meaningful and which are useless. Choppiness looks like a tradable pattern and what ultimately gets chopped up is your account. You’ll change your approach daily, never giving any strategy a fair evaluation. You may even start trading opposite of what you think, just to put an end to it. In short, you become clueless, and are never the same.

No thank you!

Every trader needs capital to trade. Cash in an account is one type of capital, but psychological capital is certainly another equal requirement. A trader must have the courage to act on his convictions and put that cash into play. Losing streaks cost money, no doubt, but more importantly they cost a trader confidence. Money can be borrowed, but without confidence, a trader simply becomes a cash holder with no ability to seize opportunity.

Trading having no imotion

Making and losing money in the blink of an eye while trading evokes all sorts of emotions. It’s so easy to get excited when a trade develops exactly like your plan. It’s equally easy to get frustrated and mad when a stock goes the wrong way and you know another trader is collecting on your mistake.
But when was the last time your emotions helped you in a trade? Has that positive excitement ever been costly to you, causing you to either book profits too early or stay in too long (feeling like it was easy)? Has your anger ever led you to put on grudge-trades, trying to “make back” your money quickly after a loss? It’s obvious to see that emotions are detrimental to your wealth!
I took up golf seriously when I was 13. My dad had always been a scratch player, so I had a great teacher for all aspects of the game. After I had been practicing and playing every day for several months, an important day arrived. He and I were playing golf one afternoon and on the 9th green, I had my first putt ever to break 40. It was about 2 ½ feet long and I should have been able to make it in my sleep. BUT, I was focused on my score rather than the process. I missed the putt, shot 40, and was mad the rest of the day. I wondered how long I’d have to wait for another chance at a meaningful putt like that. My Dad made some comments which helped me then and continue to help me now. He said I rushed my effort and was clearly thinking about score (results) rather than making the putt (the process). He suggested I implement a pre-shot routine, which is a mental and physical checklist to go through prior to each shot. Doing so would help me to focus on the process rather than the result. I broke 40 a few days later, excited about this new discovery.
Trading with a systematic approach can have the same positive effects on your profitability that my pre-shot routine gave me in golf. Even if you take discretionary trades, going through a routine and focusing on the process will let you execute your trading plan much better than watching your account balance fluctuate and having your emotions flutter just as often. This might mean that each evening you do some research or screen for chart patterns. It might mean you read a stock newsletter, scan the news, or set up conditional alerts as a safety net to your trading. Maybe it just means you go through the same routine each morning, adding some structure to your day and leveling out your emotions. Whatever it may mean for you, I highly suggest implementing some kind of trading routine to help combat the emotions that every one of us faces with trading. You’ll have time to do all of your celebrating later!

Stock on downtrend

Everyone wants a great deal. If you don’t think so, just consider the day-after-Thanksgiving sales with people lined up outside the stores at 5am to buy merchandise on sale. We want things now and we want them cheap! When it comes to stocks, however, I know better.
They say to buy low and sell high. It’s a good concept if you can get it to work, but it implies that buying low is the first thing to do. Novice stock traders look to buy “cheap” stocks, whether it’s just a low-priced stock or a stock well off its highs. Remember, cheap stocks tend to be cheap for a reason!
Low-dollar stocks often fall into one of two categories: the former high-fliers which have split so many times and come down so far that they are simply too liquid and “thick” to make much of a move (LU, NT, etc.), and stocks which are cheap because they fizzled out long ago and no buzz has been generated since. These kinds of stocks don’t move enough for an active trader, unless you are as interested in trading so many shares that your broker makes as much in commission as you do in profits.
A downtrending stock is making lower highs and lower lows. Money is coming out of it. People are walking away in search of finding something more attractive. When you buy a stock, you want it to go up, so look for stocks with some buzz, some positive activity, and some momentum.

Swing Trading

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Triple Bottom Pattern

Chart patterns work the same on an intraday basis as they do on a daily chart. Today I was watching GRMN, which had been weak all day and was nearing the lows of the day. I actually was waiting for a breakdown to short sell the stock, but once the lows held, I noticed a familiar pattern – the triple bottom pattern. Immediately I bought the stock and set my stop loss for the low of the day. Momentum began to build as the shorts started to get squeezed, and I had quite a nice winner on my screen. While I didn’t catch the entire move up, I did catch a big piece of the move and it was great for my P&L.
Triple bottom patterns aren’t just found on daily charts - they can also be found and traded on an intraday basis.
Be sure to apply well-known chart patterns to your day trading as well as your swing trading. Being a flexible trader with a willingness to change directions when your original thesis is proven wrong can pay off very nicely!
Jeff White